


Words Hung Above

by headfirstfrhalos



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: ? - Freeform, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Platonic Kissing, Retrospective, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 05:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18543238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headfirstfrhalos/pseuds/headfirstfrhalos
Summary: Tyler is still afraid to acknowledge it, even with two marriages and ten years safely wedged between them. Fear turns into defensive resentment as he finds himself wanting to demand why Josh would bring this up now, at two in the morning when they have to be up at six.





	Words Hung Above

“Tyler?”

Josh’s voice stirs Tyler from his mindless half-dreams. Bleary, he blinks up at the ceiling a few times before turning his head to look at Josh. He thought the man was still asleep.

“Hmm?” he hums, voice thick and slow with exhaustion.

The mattress warps and the sheets rustle as Josh props himself up on one elbow to look down at Tyler. It’s not totally dark in LA, it never is, and Tyler can see Josh’s mussy-haired silhouette and the glint of his glasses lenses from the light pollution.    

“Remember when we used to sleep in the back of that van?” Josh asks. His voice is little more than a rumbling puff of warm air, and _yes_ , Tyler remembers those days because he’s living them all over again in Josh’s bed.

They’ve got a constellation of shows all over Southern California, and the two of them decided to stay in Josh’s apartment in LA instead of bothering to book a hotel. It was Tyler’s idea; Josh is happy to go anywhere, sleep anywhere, but homes are meant to be lived in, and Tyler appreciates the virtues of having a mattress that’s molded to the shape of your back after years of sleeping on it.

“Yeah,” Tyler says. He swallows. “Why?”

Josh’s mattress has a dip in the very center where he usually sleeps, and gravity keeps pulling them towards that depression, compelling them to get closer, to press against each other and feel each other’s warmth. Tyler wants to more than anything, but he can’t-- his chance to do so passed years ago. He wishes that he’d insisted on taking the couch like he originally planned.

Tyler can’t see Josh’s eyes, but he can feel them on his face, studying him, searching.

“Because,” Josh pauses, and he speaks very carefully, “I think things could have ended a lot differently if we hadn’t been so afraid of acknowledging it.”

Tyler’s throat audibly clicks as he swallows. He knows what Josh is talking about. The warmth in his gut from Josh’s gentle teasing. Fleeting touches on arms, shoulders, backs, that were so feather-light and muffled by layers and layers of clothing that it suggested a fragility in both of them. The raw, bleeding feeling in his heart at the idea that someone would want to be close to him, could be so gentle with him, could _know_ him inside and out. That someone would be willing to give everything up for him-- not just his job, but his parents, his church, his whole country’s law. It had all mixed into a heady cocktail of emotions that he’d been too chickenshit to thoroughly examine.

Tyler is still afraid to acknowledge it, even with two marriages and ten years safely wedged between them. Fear turns into defensive resentment as he finds himself wanting to demand why Josh would bring this up _now_ , at two in the morning when they have to be up at six.

He looks up at Josh’s face, darkened and obscured, but he knows the look he’s giving Tyler (and that’s part of the problem; he knows exactly what expression Josh is wearing right now) and he can’t bring himself to just roll over and fall asleep.

“They could have,” Tyler finally says, because he’s not so childish or cowardly as to outright deny it. “But it doesn’t matter now, because we can’t go back. We were just lonely. Go to sleep, Josh.”

Now he rolls over. He shuts his eyes and tries to go back to sleep, but Josh has opened this can of worms and Tyler can’t contain his own thoughts.

Josh is the only man Tyler’s had these feelings for, which is usually proof enough for him to dismiss the possibility that he was (is?) in love. They were starved for affection back in those days, raised on spartan Midwestern values-- of course it would make sense that they’d cling to the first human who offered them the possibility of comfort and understanding.

_(Then why--?)_

Josh sighs through his nose, the sound bordering on irate, but mostly just tired.

“Then why am I still feeling these things now?” he asks, vocalizing exactly what Tyler was refusing to think.

“I don’t know,” Tyler says, and it comes out more snappishly than he’d intended.

“I have everything I could possibly want,” Josh continues, and Tyler’s grateful he doesn’t sound hurt, used to Tyler shutting down during difficult conversations. “I’ve made new friends, your band’s famous, I’m getting _married_ , for crying out loud. It can’t be that I’m _lonely_.”

 _It’s_ our _band,_ Tyler helplessly thinks.

But Josh is right. They have everything they could have ever wanted. Jenna’s the complete opposite of frigid and distant and despite his jokes, he’s not feeling jealous and miserable that she’s spending the night with a friend of hers who’s also in town. He’s not lonely, but every cell in his body calls out to hold Josh close, to drink him in, to melt into him entirely.

“Then what is it?” Tyler challenges.

“It’s-- it’s...”

Josh squirms around the word, and his sputtering tells Tyler all he needs to know.

“Dude, just say it,” Tyler says. “You’re the one who brought this up, you have to say it.”

“ _Love_ ,” Josh says, and his voice is a shaky octave higher than normal.

Tyler doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything for a long time. He can hear Josh’s slightly ragged breathing behind him and the ticking of the alarm clock on the nightstand in front of him.

“Tyler,” Josh finally says. “Tyler, please turn around.”

Tyler complies.

“Are you angry with me?” Josh asks. “Tell me the truth.”

The truth? No. He isn’t angry, and he could never be, not as long as Josh is being honest and genuine, and Josh has never been anything but.

“No,” Tyler admits, because he owes Josh that much, “but I don’t like having this conversation.”

“But we need to have it.”

Tyler covers his face with his hands, rubbing his eyes.

“Why?” he groans in Josh’s direction. “Why now?”

“Because you’re right next to me. Hasn’t it been eating away at you?”

It has. Tyler can’t deny that, as good as he was at ignoring feelings he didn’t want to feel. Inconvenient feelings that tied him down to someone or something were best abandoned and ignored.

But he could never abandon or ignore Josh, and so the problem persisted.

“Tyler,” Josh says when he doesn’t respond, “look at me. Please?”

He finds gentle, warm hands at his hands, gently tugging them off his eyes and folding them onto his chest. When Tyler can see again, Josh’s face is directly above his. His hair looks almost identical to the way it did back when he was new to the band, and something impossibly fond stirs in his chest. But something is missing.

Tyler reaches up and carefully lifts Josh’s glasses off his face, folding the chunky plastic arms and dropping them on the nightstand with a soft clatter.

It’s 2009 again.

“Thanks,” Josh says. “Now I can’t see.”

Tyler laughs, and he’s grateful for the lightened mood, because they’re headed into uncharted territory and he’d cry if he didn’t laugh.

“It’s been bothering me, too,” Tyler says, finally answering Josh’s question. “God, you don’t know how much it’s bothered me, Josh. But what can we do about it? I can’t-- I don’t see how this can be reconciled, if you want to use that word.”

Feeling brave, Tyler reaches up again to card his fingers through Josh’s hair, ruining the neat ringlets they’d settled into after his shower. Josh’s eyes slide shut at the sensation and he almost purrs.

“Does Debby do that?” Tyler ventures.

Josh shakes his head, the motion dislodging Tyler’s fingers.

“Not like you.”

His heart twists at the words, and the next breath he takes in is audibly shaky.

“Are you alright?” Josh asks. “We’re-- we’re doing something wrong, aren’t we?”

Josh starts to shift away, but Tyler grabs onto his shirt and holds him in place. Josh stops and looks back at Tyler, wearing a worried look that makes him seem ten years younger.

“We’re doing this as friends,” Tyler says, unsure if he’s trying to reassure Josh or himself. “And we’re friends before we’re anything else.”

“And husbands,” Josh adds, still not looking convinced.

“Of course,” Tyler says. “We’re not going to-- to do anything. We’re just airing things out. Just letting each other know where we are. Communication is good, isn’t it? For everyone involved in this train wreck.”

Josh closes his eyes as he breathes in, then out. He seems much calmer when he opens them again.

“Okay,” he says. “Then let’s-- let’s communicate. Are you in love with me?”

Tyler’s mouth goes dry at the sudden bluntness of Josh’s words.

What makes a friendship? What makes a romance? Where do you draw the line between the two? What is love but the relief in knowing you’re no longer alone?

The more Tyler thinks about it, the more he realizes he doesn’t have a satisfactory answer.

“I have... strong feelings towards you,” Tyler says. “Being near you feels like-- it feels like blooming. I don’t know what else to say. I just want to be closer to you. Can we do that?”

“How close?” Josh asks, and Tyler realizes that they’re already plenty close. Still, it’s not enough.

He reaches up, wrapping his arms over Josh’s shoulders, and gently starts to pull him down until their bodies meet, chest to chest, Josh’s face resting in the crook of Tyler’s neck. One of Tyler’s hands come up to curl in the hair at the back of Josh’s head.

“Oh,” Josh breathes, and Tyler can feel the word vibrating against his chest, breathed out against the skin of his neck.

“Is this close enough for you?” Tyler asks, marvelling at the solid weight of Josh’s body on top of his.

“Almost,” Josh says. “I just want to do one more thing.”

Josh turns his head until his face is pressed into Tyler’s cheek, and there he plants a lingering kiss.

“That’s all,” Josh says before settling back into the junction of Tyler’s neck and shoulder.

Tyler’s surprised to find that his eyes are watering, and a tear slips out of his right eye when he blinks, sliding down his cheek, over the spot where Josh kissed him, and into Josh’s hair.

“Are you--?”

“Yeah,” Tyler says, reaching up with one hand to wipe his eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just... feeling a lot of things. We can talk about it tomorrow, with Jenna and Debby. You should get some sleep.”

“If you say so,” Josh says, quietly trusting in the way he’s been for all these years, and some of the yearning in Tyler’s heart is satiated. “Goodnight, Tyler.”

“Goodnight, Josh.”

Tyler keeps his arms wrapped around Josh’s back as he stares up at the ceiling, his promise seeming to hang in the air above him. It’s going to be very awkward, no doubt about that, but ultimately he’s happy that the conversation is even going to happen in the first place. Whether or not he and Josh get to have their cake and eat it too is still up in the air, but Tyler’s willing to ask for it. His heart’s in full bloom as the both of them settle into the hole that time and gravity dug for them.


End file.
